How To Brush Your Teeth & Gums Properly

Transcription:
Dr. Vinograd – “There is a space between the gums and teeth that is traditionally one or two millimeters deep, however, once the sulcus start getting deeper, it’s very difficault to get in there and remove bacteria. So it is a good practice to get the bristles of the toothbrush in that space between the tooth and the gums. So I usually advise my patients to break this up into two different sessions – the first session is actually addressing your gums, and the sulcus between the tooth and the gum. And you do that by either a very soft, manual or even electrical toothbrush with soft bristles.

The idea is basically to get those bristles to really penetrate the space between the tooth and the gum. I usually ask the patients not to use toothpaste for this part of the procedure because when you use toothpaste you brush very quickly, and in order for this procedure to be effective, we have to get in there and really clean those spaces out. So if you have a really mild toothpaste, or want to use one of the toothpaste recipes we have online, you can do that – for this part of the procedure, you want a toothpaste that will not have an abrasive element.

If you are not going to use a toothpaste, that is fine, just soak your toothbrush in water, and then youre going to take the toothbrush and place it on the space right between the tooth and the gum at 45 degrees. So lowers are going to be 45 degrees downward, and the upper teeth are going to be 45 degrees upward. So these are the bristles that you actually want to penetrate the space between the tooth and the gum. So it would look something like this – we would start back here, the bristles right in the space between the gums, and then spend a good 20 seconds just dislodging that bacteria from the space. We would continue to move forward, 20 seconds on each spot, all the way around the outside – and then actually do the same on the inside, which is 45 degrees down into the sulcus, and again vibrate gently. This is not a procedure that has to be rough or harsh. So we’re going to do the inside, and when we’re done then we go with the uppers, obviously 45 degrees up – and again all of the outside, and all of the inside.

Once you have performed this part of the treatment, you can now either use the same or even a little harder toothbrush with your toothpaste, and begin to brush your teeth. After that you want to floss them as well – and in addition to this, you can use a waterpik with plain water, or with ozonated water to be more effective in reducing the pathogenic bacteria.”